Okay...My Circumstances Have Changed: The Oppo Wasn't What I'd Thought It Would Be...

[ClinicaTerra LTD]

Alright.

Fed Ex arrived at my door yesterday with Oppo's new flagship upscaling DVD deck, the '983, which has been sold out on their site since the player was announced. I hooked up its included HDMI cable to my Onkyo '605's open HDMI 2 jack, set all assignments and set up the player for optimum 1080p output and CUE correction, scaling, etc. The end result was surprisingly not that different from what I see with my Panasonic Blu-ray player's DVD upconversion, and that's not saying much...

Sure -- most DVDs I ran though this player looked better than on the Panasonic -- but not terrifically better; the same problem discs gave me the same "issues" with the Oppo, at a slightly lesser extent or even not any different at all in some cases. For example, I popped in "No Reservations" on DVD, a title from my fiance's DVD collection that's mixed with mine, and on the Panasonic, at 1080p, there is HORRENDOUS ringing and staticky "noise" around the characters throughout the whole film -- this same problem was seen on the Oppo. Old titles that gave me problems in the past like "The Exorcist" still looked noisy and "dirty" with still some mosaic noise in the background -- I was dissapointed because this player was supposed to correct these issues via its Anchor Bay chip.

I have boiled this down to a few things:

1. There is something wrong with the HDMI cable Oppo supplies in the box with their players; it was gold plated but maybe it just sucks...

2. Something is going wrong with the way my Onkyo receiver is passing video through its HDMI OUT port -- seems everything that's played through this receiver no matter what the source component doesn't look all that great -- even 1080p Blu-ray...if this is the case, I don't know what to do...

3. Perhaps something is wrong with my Sony SXRD TV -- it's been calibrated with a disc, but perhaps this TV is introducing some kinds of artifacts...

At any rate, here is where I am now, Blu-ray Forum friends:

My criteria and circumstances have now changed for what I'm looking for in a new player...

I think I am going to return the Oppo player and just invest in another Blu-ray player, but now, it MUST have good DVD upconversion...

So -- the criteria are now these: Excellent Blu-ray performance (well, "better" than my Panasonic 'BD10A) with bitstreaming of TrueHD and Master Audio AND excellent DVD upscaling...

Would this just about leave the flagship Denon player with the Realta chip? If this is the case, I'll just cave and spend the two grand...

Should that Denon upscale the DVDs to my specifications with little or no block noise or artifacting at 1080p?

Please, recommend a player for me now with those mentioned characteristics...thanks so much, as always!